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It’s Never Quiet on the Newt Front

By Andrew Rosenthal March 26, 2012 2:27 pmMarch 26, 2012 2:27 pm

As the inevitable Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, gets closer and closer to becoming the actual nominee, Newt Gingrich is surely, but very slowly, dropping out of public view. Soon he’ll go back to sitting on the front porch of the right-wing, shaking his fist at passing ideas. He’ll go back, in other words, to the post he’s occupied since he was drummed out of the House Speaker’s job in 1998.

But he’s not wasting his last moments as a national figure. He’s using them to whip up anger at President Obama.
Last Friday, the G.O.P. candidates expressed dismay at the death of Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager. Mr. Romney said the killing was “a terrible tragedy—unnecessary, uncalled for, and inexplicable at this point.” Rick Santorum criticized the local police: “It’s chilling to hear what happened and, of course, the fact that law enforcement didn’t immediately go after and prosecute this case is another chilling example of obviously horrible decisions made by people in this process.” Mr. Gingrich spoke out in a similarly reasonable fashion, at first, but later seized the opportunity to attack the president.

Mr. Obama’s statement that “If I had a son, he’d look like Trayvon” threw Mr. Gingrich into a tizzy: “Is the president suggesting that if it had been a white who had been shot, that would be OK because it didn’t look like him,” Mr. Gingrich said on the Sean Hannity radio program, knowing perfectly well that Mr. Obama wasn’t saying that.

Mr. Gingrich pointed out the obvious – the death of a teenager in those circumstances would be tragic regardless of his race—and then falsely accused Mr. Obama of “trying to turn it into a racial issue.”

Mr. Gingrich went on about the need to “get beyond any sense of some American group being the other,” an interesting remark from a man who advocates putting urban black kids to work as janitors so they can learn there’s an alternative to a career as a pimp.

Friday was a busy day for Mr. Gingrich. Not only did he endorse moving toward a color blind America, he also explained that while Mr. Obama is not a Muslim, he does act like one. “Why does the president behave the way that people would think that [he is a Muslim]?” he said, and accused him of “consistently apologizing to Islam while attacking the Catholic Church.”

In case that statement confuses you—which it probably should—here’s my gloss: Mr. Gingrich was comparing the administration’s decision to apologize to Afghanistan after U.S. troops were caught burning Korans (“apologizing to Islam”), with the administration’s birth control mandate (“attacking the Catholic Church”).

When he’s back on the front porch, I think Mr. Gingrich will remember Friday fondly.

Monday, March 26 | Update
The initial version of this blog post did not mention that, before attacking Mr. Obama’s remarks, Mr. Gingrich spoke out against the killing.